The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Movie Review

the good the bad and the ugly was directed by Sergio Leone and is a masterpiece there's no question how many films out there can be parodied and even if you've never seen it you instantly know the parody if you see any film or any comedy sketch that has this sound you know it's the good the bad and the ugly even if you've never seen it that's how famous this film is and deservedly so virtually every single sequence in this film is iconic the characters the stare downs the duals the cinematography the music in Omar khones incredible themes everything about this movie is unescapable in American pop culture you cannot make a Western film anymore without being compared to this film it is impossible after this film came out this was like the jaws of westerns you can't make a shark movie without being compared to jaws and when you hear people talking about this movie you get so hyped about it you get excited about it and then you watch it and it's actually that good this is one of those films that just does not disappoint let's talk about the greatest Western ever made my favorite personal one - good - bad and the ugly and it opens with a sequence that immediately subverts expectations you see these men approaching each other from opposite sides and you think to yourself they're about to have a gun duel but no they burst into a place and try to rob it and out pops the ugly played by Eli Wallach in one of his best roles and the one that he's probably the most known for an ex were introduced to Angel Eyes played by Lee Van Cleef also known as the bad and a brilliant image that has everything and focused including this man's shoulder in the foreground and angel eyes in the doorway Leone did a lot of beautiful things with the camera here and he used a lot of camera tricks to try to make us feel like we were watching something that was almost painted this film looks like it was created on a canvas and if you ever get the chance to see it in the theaters please do because these images just explode on a gigantic screen and next we meet the good clean Eastwood's a guard shooing eye squinting blondie also known as Joe in a fistful of dollars and Manko and a few dollars more he does go by names in these films it's just that they're never the same also there is serious doubts on whether or not these films are actually connected sergio leone has said that he never really meant to make a continuing story arc and this can be supported by the fact that he reuses actors who perished in one film and show up with different names in the next film but there are also people who think that this film is a prequel to the first two because this takes place in the middle of the American Civil War whereas the other films didn't have anything to do with that and blondie adopts his famous outfit at the end of this film whereas in the other two he had it from the very beginning and people use weapons that were around in different time periods and so people are always trying to figure out what the timeline what is the chronology and I think it's kind of a superfluous thing you don't really have to worry about it it's clear that basically Leone was making spiritual successors he was basically experimenting with this character played by Eastwood putting him in different scenarios changing some things around not really concerning himself with a continuing storyline the way I view the dollars trilogy is sort of the way I view at girl rights Cornetto trilogy their unofficial follow ups but they have similar actors playing similar roles they're kind of connected but they're not actually connected one of the best things I ever heard about this film in particular was said by Roger Ebert in his great movies review of it he talked about the fact that Sergio Leone doesn't concern himself that much with plot or storyline he's a director of situations he puts you in the middle of a staredown a duel an action sequence in a saloon a war that suddenly breaks out with the two main characters in the middle of it or a Hot Desert Sun sequence two opposing scenes where each man tortures the other person by not letting them have water and stranding them in the middle of nowhere it's almost like he's creating a serialized adventure television show where every 30 minutes there's some new thing to worry about or so new scheme or sequence that's going to get your blood pumping and they all enter we've beautifully particularly in this one the first two films are good westerns but with each passing one Leone improved on all of his techniques and with this film he proved himself to be a master of the craft and I wish he had directed more films because his following ones after this once upon a time in the West and America are both also extremely good and they're just I there wasn't enough of him it was kind of like Kubrick in my opinion to be honest I think Kubrick is the better filmmaker in the long run but they both were the type of guys that directed a movie every once in a while only when they really felt like it and I guess that's what you get when you get the true masters they just they get their hands on a story they like and they're ready to go but unless they fall deeply in love with the material they're only gonna make a few movies and what Leone left us is good enough for me but I wish we had a little more if I were to do a review of this film without talking a little bit about Ennio Morricone as music that would have been a failure yeah everyone said everything that you could possibly think to say about his themes and there's a reason for that you can't have this movie without that music it's been imitated it's been parodied so many other soundtracks have been inspired by it as I said earlier it's inescapable you really cannot make a Western without music like that involved when you see a desert landscape and some old run-down town you automatically hear somebody whistling and some epic trumpet solo in the background you can't get rid of it it's in our consciousness most of Quentin Tarantino's work especially Django Unchained has been in some way inspired by Sergio Leone I mean you can look at even Cowboy Bebop and see how this film inspired it there's an entire episode called cowboy funk that has a theme by Yoko Kanno that sounds like this [Music] [Music] even the opening titles of Cowboy Bebop are very reminiscent of what Leone did in a fistful of dollars and the good the bad and the ugly but let's not forget about a filmmaker that's very important to mention and that's Akira Kurosawa who made Yojimbo which very much so inspired Leone when he made a fistful of dollars I mean some of the even gone as far as to call it a shot-for-shot remake and your Jimbo I would say is a better film so if you haven't had a chance to see yo Jimbo please do see that and all of his other films Seven Samurai they're great masterpieces just like you've heard they're all really good Leone is a director who understands visual storytelling very well he is so good at creating images on the screen where you don't even need dialogue to understand exactly what he's trying to convey to you the first like 10 11 minutes this movie doesn't even have a single word in it and especially with the finale which we'll talk about soon but there's a great sequence where Tuco is trying to find blondie and he's doing so by tracking various campfires and finding cigars and he finally finds one and he's able to puff a little smoke out of it and he's like okay I know I'm close and he know this because of all the other dried out cigars he picked up beforehand and he finally finds one that still has some fire in it and you can see it on his eyes he knows blondie is near the way Leone positions all of his characters in a confrontation is so great you have angel eyes who's looking for someone named Bill Carson then you have to go and blondie coming across the dying body of Bill Carson however Bill Carson who knows where this gold is at a graveyard tells both Tuco and blondie two different things and one of them knows the cemetery the other knows the gravestone and so all of these guys end up coming together at the same place this camp that Tuco and blondie are not supposed to be in and somebody's shouting for Bill Carson and since he's dead - goes like yeah I'm Bill Carson we cut to Angel Eyes going hmm I've been looking for you and what follows is one of the most realistic beatings of 1960s film a lot of films from this era some rather cheesy looking fight scenes this sequence is brutal it really looks like Tuco is basically being killed it doesn't look fake you can tell that he wasn't just making a film with fun entertaining action sequences that he'd liked to look at he really cared about composing complicated shots there's a shot of Eastwood rolling down a sand hill coming to a stop right in front of the camera then Wallach takes a bottle rolls it down that hill and it hits him in the side of his head all of this had to be planned that was a stunt that Eastwood did the sand had to look like no one had ever walked on it before and all of that had to happen perfectly these are complicated shots that a lot of directors think about and they get cold sweats because they don't want to have to try to do all of that in one image but Lee only did it and the film's all the better for moments like that once these three characters arrive at the cemetery where they all know this gold is buried somewhere they all have different bits of information that could lead to the finding of it it's I don't know top five finales of all time the five to six minutes of them standing in this circle there's no dialogue it's just close-ups of their faces they're sweating they're squinting their hands are nearing their weapons and Ennio Morricone gets a lot of praise here this music is like next-level it's just so good you can't rip it away from this movie it is just ingrained within it you can't have it's like you know anything John Williams ever did in the 70s and 80s you can't imagine those films without that music and it's the same with Eno Morricone in these spaghetti westerns and my favorite moment in the entire staredown is Angel Eyes hand coming closer to the gun Eastwood looks at him and the hand just goes away just that one look from that squinty-eyed cigar chewing badass just made that hit nope not gonna take the gun yet it's just this [ __ ] man this is what film is about this is this is why I love movies it's movies like this now I must be honest while I do love this film and I do think it's a masterpiece there is an element of it that is truly awful and that's the ADR the dubbing process has gone into some of the actors who were on set who were speaking their own native Italian language and were later dubbed into English all three of the dollar's films suffer from this especially the first one the second one not as bad and also this one not as bad but that first one especially you could tell that they just they weren't ready for dubbing yet and it's just like they they kind of just shot scenes and said yeah don't worry about it we'll make an amazing image and not worry that much about the sound which was a major mistake the audio in these films very bad music amazing audio the dubbing really ruined some scenes but you kind of just have to look past it and I give older films a pass with this sometimes because I understand that the technology just wasn't quite there yet but watching it today it's a little rough and I'm not gonna downgrade the film because of that all that being said the good the bad and the ugly is everything you've ever heard it is the classic Western it is a timeless iconic masterpiece and it absolutely deserves an A+ guys thank you so much as always for watching my continuing series of pre-1970s reviews I just feel that it's important that people on YouTube on this platform talk about older films because they're the films that inspire the type of movies we're seeing today I mean all of our favorite films from the 80s and 90s and 2000's were inspired by this generation the filmmakers who made films then like Tarantino for instance are the people who saw Sergio Leone's films and said yeah I really want to do that myself and I hope to see more older film reviews on YouTube like 2001 a Space Odyssey which I'm going to review in April because that's that movie's 50th anniversary April March we'll figure out March still but I just wanted to let you know that April is definitely 2001 a Space Odyssey guys thank you very much as always for watching and if you like this you can click right here and get stockman eyes [Music]

Channel: Chris Stuckmann

Views: 639,648

Rating: 4.9561677 out of 5

Keywords: The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Man With No Name, Trilogy, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, Chris Stuckmann, Movie Review, Reviews, Film, Scene, Clip, Trailer, Teaser, Music, Ending, Duel, Final, Finale, Soundtrack, Ecstacy of Gold, Score, 1966, Ennio Morricone, Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, Lee Van Cleef, Sergio Leone, Western, Draw, Cemetary, Graveyard, Train, Desert, You Dig, Civil War, Fight

Id: DXVvqtx2kQo

Length: 13min 7sec (787 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 25 2018